Caitlin Oliver sets new Splatterhouse arcade record

[Lawnachaun]

Splatterhouse: Chicago woman sets new arcade game world record

The cult classic beat-em-up Splatterhouse has a new world record champion.

Caitlin Oliver, a 30-year-old Chicago native, achieved the new record score of 493,700 points on Saturday, October 19 while playing live at Windy City destination Galloping Ghost Arcade. Oliver's new mark, which was set during a live internet broadcast, shatters the previous record mark of 373,100 points set last year at the same location by Anthony Paparo, according to the Aurcade high score database. The score has been submitted to longtime world record adjudicators Twin Galaxies for complete verification.

Caitlin's new world record mark makes her the first woman in almost 30 years to set a world record on a video arcade game. It also marks the latest chapter in a longtime history with the Namco classic.

"I first got my hands on Splatterhouse as a young girl," she recalled. "My father picked up a TurboGrafx-16 for me one lucky Christmas and he was always good about letting me pick out a game to rent for the weekend at the local video rental stores. Once I got it home I was totally hooked. Gross monsters, corpses, skeletons; it had it all."

Oliver also stated that she believes her interest in the game tied into her love for horror films starting at an even younger age.

"I was a pretty weird little girl," she said. "If you ask my mother she'll tell you that my favorite movie as a child was Night of the Living Dead. Supposedly, if it was on TV and you changed the channel away from it I'd start crying until you turned it back on. That's according to her, I personally have no recollection of that at all, but I'd believe it."

Originally, the idea of pursuing a world record score is not something Oliver considered until it was suggested by a friend while playing at the Galloping Ghost one evening. After thinking of Steve Wiebe's story in 2007 film The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, she said he decided to prepare to take a shot.

"Nobody starts out as a world record holder, you have to work at it," she stated. "I didn't expect to get it so quickly after making the decision to go for it, however it helps that I spent about 20 years before it playing the TurboGrafx version. There were certain parts that I knew were my actual weak points and I had to figure out the mechanics to work on those."

Caitlin's record-setting performance was not the first time she broke the record on Saturday night. By the time she set her 493,700 point score she had already defeated Paparo's record with a score of 405,100 before deciding to push the score higher.

"The first time I finished, when I initially topped Anthony's score, I thought my heart was going to pound straight through my chest," Oliver said. "It was possibly the most intense rush of adrenaline I've ever felt in my life. It was unreal to have decided to work to accomplish something and proceed to become the best in the world at something. Utterly incredible feeling. I nearly ran outside for a cigarette afterwards."

Oliver states her new Splatterhouse record has received a great deal of support from others in the arcade gaming community.

"The huge outpouring of support from everyone, including hall of fame level arcade players, gamers everywhere, friends, family, has been overwhelming and was completely unexpected," she added. "It was one of the greatest moments in my life and everyone supporting me helped make it feel like that. The deepest gratitude from the bottom of my heart."

Caitlin Oliver also added that she might not be done setting arcade records as of yet. The owner of the arcade suggested Sega's Altered Beast as her next potential world record target

She's The First Woman To Set An Arcade Game Record In Nearly 30 Years

On Saturday, September 19 at the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Chicago, Illinois, 30-year-old Caitlin Oliver set the new world record for the arcade version of Namco's classic beat-em up, Splatterhouse. According to video game historian Patrick Scott Patterson, the last time a woman set an arcade game world record, Caitlin was around one-year-old.

The old Splatterhouse record was 373,100 points, set in the same arcade a year previous by one Anthony Paparo. Oliver broke that record twice on Saturday, racking up 405,100 points in her first run and then further padding her lead with a 493,700 point follow-up.

Oliver describes the experience of breaking the record in an interview Patrick Scott Patterson.



"The first time I finished, when I initially topped Anthony's score, I thought my heart was going to pound straight through my chest," Oliver said. "It was possibly the most intense rush of adrenaline I've ever felt in my life. It was unreal to have decided to work to accomplish something and proceed to become the best in the world at something. Utterly incredible feeling. I nearly ran outside for a cigarette afterwards."

The previous woman to achieve an arcade game world record was Doris Self, AKA the world's oldest video game champion. She set the world record for Q*Bert — 1,112,300 — on July 1, 1984 at the age of 58. Though her record didn't hold, Doris continued competing until her death in 2006. Her efforts to reclaim her score were chronicled in the 2007 competitive arcade gaming documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

Why aren't there more women breaking arcade game world records? For what I figure, there aren't all that many people going after these records, period. That, and the drive to conquer these sort of games is rooted in nostalgia, and there weren't nearly as many girl gamers back when arcades were on every street corner as there are today. In my town, at least, the boys went into the arcade and broke things, while the girls hung out in the food court, setting fires in the ashtrays with hairspray.

At least that was my experience.

So how'd Caitlin Oliver get into Splatterhouse? From the interview:

"I first got my hands on Splatterhouse as a young girl," she recalled. "My father picked up a TurboGrafx-16 for me one lucky Christmas and he was always good about letting me pick out a game to rent for the weekend at the local video rental stores. Once I got it home I was totally hooked. Gross monsters, corpses, skeletons; it had it all."

See? Nostalgia. Weird nostalgia, but definitely nostalgia.

Oliver's feat was streamed live via Twitch over the weekend, and is archived here.




A replay of the stream can be seen here.. http://www.twitch.tv/gallopingghostarcade/b/471712373

 

[Professor E. Gadd]

Believe it or not, I've never played Splatterhouse. It's just one of those arcade games I never got to play, even though I'm a big Namco fan.

 

[Lawnachaun]

Believe it or not, I've never played Splatterhouse. It's just one of those arcade games I never got to play, even though I'm a big Namco fan.

Really, wow. Yeah, I remember back when I was a little kid in the 80's, my brother and I would go to the arcade all of the time. We loved Splatterhouse, among other titles. In fact, before we ever got the NES, in the mid-to-late 80's, we would head down to the arcade a lot in the early-to-mid 80's. The arcades were the place to be, back then. I can still remember the atmosphere, sounds, smells, and feelings, from those days. Those were great days. Now a days tho, I've been to an arcade a few times, and it doesn't feel anywhere near the same as it did then. Not even close. I miss the old days.

Anyways, yeah, we used to play Splatterhouse at the arcades a lot. Never beat it at the arcades. When we did, sometimes we'd try again, or, more often then naught, we'd move on to one of the many other games that were readily available to us. But yeah, I have fond memories of Splatterhouse. I last played it on the Wii Virtual Console. Feels stiff, and a bit dated. But overall, its still not a bad game. It should still be on the Wii Virtual Console, if you want to check it out. You might want to check out a youtube video to check out the gameplay, to see if it'll be worth it or not, to you.